Amex might have a new 5 charge card limit (but possibly only on personal cards)

Doctor of Credit reported yesterday on a potentially concerning development for some people as American Express appears to have implemented a new limit of five charge cards.

However, when looking at the data points, things might not be quite as concerning as it initially appears. That’s because this change seems to only be applicable to personal charge cards, plus it might only be affecting those in the military.

For quite a few years, Amex cardholders have been able to hold ten charge cards and five credit cards, although there have been occasional data points of people being able to get a sixth credit card. A change limiting the number of charge cards to five would therefore be significant as it would represent a 50% decrease on the previous limit.

So far, all of the data points seem to point to it only being personal charge cards that are affected, such as the various flavors of American Express Platinum Card® and the American Express® Gold Card. If that’s the case, it would mean you’d still be able to have up to ten charge cards if those included business cards such as The Business American Express Platinum Card® and American Express® Business Gold Card.

What seems particularly notable is that all of the data points so far appear to come from those in the military. American Express waives the annual fee on personal cards for active duty military and their spouses, thereby making cards with high annual fees – and thus a high benefit value – extremely desirable. Now that Amex has increased the annual fee of the Platinum Card® to $895 per cardmember year and boosted the value that can be obtained from the card via its myriad of benefits, a military member and their spouse could potentially have gotten $17,900 of annual fees waived on charge cards alone. If that couple maxed out the benefits on the revamped Platinum Card®, Amex would be losing a lot of money funding those benefits in exchange for zero annual fees.

That is, until this – presumed – new limit of five charge cards came recently. There is more to this that should be considered though.

For starters, there aren’t any reports of Amex closing anyone’s cards if they have more than five personal charge cards. If you already have six or more personal charge cards, you’re likely grandfathered in to the limit of ten. You won’t be able to add more if you’re below that limit, but it certainly doesn’t seem like you’ll lose the ability to retain your current number of charge cards.

It might also be the case that this new limit of five personal charge cards only affects those in the military who are eligible to have their annual fees waived. That said, I’m not sure of the legalities as to whether Amex would be allowed to treat those in the military differently to everyone else. I imagine active duty military are the most likely people to be adding new personal Amex charge cards, so it would make sense that they’re the group being disproportionately affected by this change, even if it is being applied to all cardholders.

It’s still early days with this purported change though. Most of the handful of data points have come over the course of the last ten days, although this comment on Reddit suggests the change could have been around for the last month.

Have you been affected by this change with your recent card applications? Please let us know in the comments below.

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